Members of the Pratt city commission have taken an unusual and somewhat aggressive step to prevent residents from deciding the fate of a proposed extension of Maple Street, from Parkway Avenue to K-61.

Tuesday

Sep 29, 2009 at 12:01 AMSep 29, 2009 at 6:00 PM

Jason Probst/The Hutchinson News editorial board

Former commissioner Karen Detwiler prepared and is circulating a petition in Pratt in an effort to force a vote on the proposed $900,000 project. By all appearances, she followed protocol by asking Pratt attorney John Black and county counselor Gordon Stull to review the petition for accurate legal wording.

Stull indicated that he couldn't rule on the petition's legality, but further stated that after a five day period the petition would be deemed compliant.

The city disagrees and is challenging the petition in Pratt County District Court. City commissioner Eric Nystrom argues that government is slow enough already, without taxpayers and voters muddying up the process by exercising their constitutionally protected right to petition.

"I was always taught in school that you had the right to vote," Graf said.

Detwiler is right to view the city's maneuver as an attempt to keep her petition from getting of the ground.

Such a move by Pratt's leadership shows some disdain for the rights and concerns of voters, and is also largely unnecessary and premature because the petition hasn't yet been returned for validation at the County Clerk's office.

The city of Pratt could wait to see if Detwiler can even collect the neccesary number of signatures and then challenge the validity of those signatures. Instead, it opted to launch a complicated, and potentially costly, challenge through the court system.

If the expansion is necessary and good for the community, then Pratt's leadership shouldn't have any trouble making that case to the voting public - and they shouldn't have anything to fear from a grassroots effort to bring the issue to a vote.

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